Queen Mary University of London, Geography, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, United Kingdom.
Soc Sci Med. 2011 Feb;72(3):319-26. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.09.010. Epub 2010 Sep 29.
The question of global health has, at least since 9/11, (re)emerged as one of the world's key geopolitical issues and, as many scholars have noted, this increased attention to the state of world health is especially focused on questions of national security and vulnerability. Despite its prominence in political, health policy and scholarly circles, health geographers have tended to overlook this particular aspect of global health discourse. This paper seeks to redress this lacuna. It does so for three reasons. The first lies in the idea that this discourse is inherently geographical; after all, it is in essence concerned with the flows of human and non-human agents within and, more importantly here, across, national borders. It is also of interest because a focus on vulnerability allows for an analysis that goes beyond the current fixation with emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Although it is certainly true that the concern with such diseases dominates, and the recent focus upon H1N1 swine flu is testament to that, there is also a suggestion that the processes associated with the enhanced threat posed by these diseases are similar to those that have caused non-communicable diseases to become a global health problem too. A third reason for focussing on this aspect of the global health discourse is that the subsequent search for 'security' is highly problematic; especially if we consider the question of "who is to be protected, and from what". The aim of the paper is, then, to offer a critical review of the international discourse on global health and to highlight its relevance to scholars that self-identify as health and medical geographers.
自 9/11 事件以来，全球健康问题至少已经重新成为世界关键地缘政治问题之一，正如许多学者所指出的，人们对世界健康状况的关注度增加，尤其关注国家安全和脆弱性问题。尽管全球健康问题在政治、卫生政策和学术界备受关注，但卫生地理学家往往忽略了全球健康话语的这一特定方面。本文旨在弥补这一空白。这样做有三个原因。第一个原因在于这样一个观点，即这种话语本质上具有地理性；毕竟，它主要关注的是人类和非人类主体在国内的流动，更重要的是，在跨越国界的流动。它之所以具有吸引力，还因为关注脆弱性可以进行超越当前对新发和再现传染病的关注的分析。尽管新兴传染病和再现传染病确实令人担忧，而且人们最近对 H1N1 猪流感的关注也证明了这一点，但也有迹象表明，与这些疾病相关的增强威胁过程与非传染性疾病也成为全球健康问题的过程相似。关注全球健康话语这一方面的第三个原因是，随后对“安全”的追求存在很大问题；特别是如果我们考虑“谁将受到保护，以及保护什么”的问题。本文的目的是对全球健康的国际话语进行批判性评论，并强调其与自我认同为健康和医学地理学家的学者的相关性。
